ADs predict wine and rioting before 6.30pm (but only if the sun's out)

[Dowser]

Over here peeps.

Not much sun today..so plenty of wine it is

@BubbleIsNotAFuckingVerb both my parents were alcoholics so I feel every one of those words.

I hate that whole "wine o'clock" "mummy loves gin" bollocks things. I think of 12 y/old me with the arse hanging out of her school uniform and I think no, it's not fair to people who are struggling to get on board with an alcohol problem to imply that everybody's doing it, that it's vain and silly and puritanical to want to stop.

My heart goes out to every single one of the honest people on this thread who are uncomfortable with their relationship with booze. You are strong and you are worth it. Which sounds patronising AF but if someone had given mum kind words 40 years ago, and if my dad hadn';t been too bloody stubborn to accept that he had a problem, he might still be alive and my mum might have had something like a life.

The thing with Gateshead is that they can't really blame the housing. Most of it is houses with gardens, apart from the area around the stadium.

We are trying not to hit the booze, but by the lord Jesus a bottle of wine hits the spot at the moment.
However it was bought home to me how serious it can get, a long standing friend is in icu with cirrhosis of the liver. She's not going to survive without a transplant. She's had a long standing problem with booze for very sad reasons I won't go into as they are identifying. The lockdown has then completely tipped the balance and taken her over the edge.

There never have been bogrolls in this village as there's no pub or any other access to public convienences anyway. But there is a playground and there are little bogrolls having illegal levels of fun

DS1 was feeling anxious so we've brought his favourite cuddly and let FOMO kick in while DS2 and I play until he felt ready to come in. If we'd been dementor types, he'd have been so susceptible to lasting damege.

I'm drinking more, but that doesn't mean much. I'm lightweight and know it. My digestive system doesn't cope with much but I like an occasional gin and tonic.
I have been drunk once, a few weeks back when I ended up on my friend's sofa at my lowest ebb. She doesn't like to waste good gin with too much mixer

Oh well, playtime is over and the DCs seem much happier than they were all morning.

I loved Virginia Andrews as a teen. My aunt would give me her books once she had finished them as I'm sure they were appropriate fodder for a 13 year old.
Found one in a charity shop a few years ago and decided to relive my youth. My it was awful, badly written with deeply dubious plots and loads of incestual sex, beatings and just about any gothic horror theme you could think of.

I liked Philippa Gregorys earlier historical novels, densely plotted with the history nicely woven in, but her more recent ones appear to have been churned out hastily to the point it sometimes takes me a few pages to realise I had already read one when I started it.

Did EVERYBODY read Virginia Andrews?

Yep And the Wideacre books. Both made me feel kinda grubby.
Lots of Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy/Phillippa Carr (Eleanor Hibbert was such a prolific writer!) which I might revisit now.
Currently rereading all the Miss Read books- I find them so gentle and
easy to read.

I went to Screwfix (got the wrong thing again ffs). All easy enough, except for the woman serving the other customer. They have big perspex screens in front of the tills, so each employee is standing behind a till, behind a perspex screen, behind the counter. She barked at the poor unfortunate who dared to step a small pace from the yellow box marked on the floor to show her his tablet with his order on. So she then had to ask him his name, which he gave. But she couldn't spell it, so she raised her voice again to get him to spell it. Then she couldn't understand him so demanded his order number.

And I wondered a couple of things, while rolling my eyes so hard I gave myself a headache- what germs did she think he was going to transmit to her, through the perspex screen, by showing her his tablet?

If the world is populated by people who think that someone holding a tablet out, at arm's length, behind a perspex screen, is going to KILL THEM, what hope do we have of getting back to normal?

I read as a teen couple of Virginia Andrews book, Wuthering Heights and Middlemarch and Dracula and War of the Worlds thought them all awful.

Same age I loved Jane Austine, Dickens was bloody hard to read but stories were good, and thought Jane Eyre and Fankenstein were brilliant.

I found books and authors others make a huge fuss about it's really hard to know if I'd find them worth reading.

I'm with rookiemere with Philippa Gregorys some early books I thought good later ones seemed hastily churned out and really poor.

I never read Virginia Andrews. Judy Blume was more likely to be passed around.

Anyone read Christie Dickason?

Bloody brilliant books they are. Historical fiction, 1620s, similar to Virgin Earth but amazingly written, intelligent, funny, and well-researched.

Wales - Hunt is on to trace 300 workers from food factory run by firm that supplies Sainsbury's and Asda after 166 staff tested positive for Covid-19

Well they will be lucky local gossip is that they are illegal immigrants so off the map so to speak.

Love historical fiction, my favourite books are the John Crowner mysteries a coroner in the 12th century.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bookseries/B00JQDJ1LG/ref=dp_st_1416525939?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

@TheGreatWave

I never read Virginia Andrews. Judy Blume was more likely to be passed around.

Love Judy Blume.

What a hero.

I bought my 12 year old Are You There God It's Me, Magaret last year. She was at first, but she loved it.

Urgh, I'm so sick of people going on about schools being unsafe and people who send their children in being murderers. All the "I won't be sending mine in". Fine. Don't! Just stop going on about it

And the "can't the teachers just make worksheets for the children who are staying at home" brigade? They genuinely don't have a clue! It takes DH about an hour to make a decent worksheet or quiz activity for the kids, and it takes the more able ones about 20 mins to do it. Fine while he's not in school, but can we seriously be expecting teachers to spend +++hours per week making worksheets when they are also full time with their class?

And I'm sorry for the poor kids who are being kept home by parents who have decided that not catching Covid is the only thing that matters.

Um, and hello everyone Sorry to burst in with a rant!

When I was teaching, worksheets were very much frowned upon. Now they are being seen as an adequate education?

Hello Jourdain! How are you feeling?

Well they are making it compulsory to send them in now so they could get fined

@torydeathdrug - that is properly shot, and they don't deserve your company.

@trapped - thinking of you

Definitely smelling more wacky baccy locally.

I am 'lucky' that I don't drink wine or beer (just a limited selection of spirits), and have never been a home drinker, or an excess drinker (I know I am sounding the most boring person ever). My parents weren't really, and neither liked wine. My grandfather was a heavy drinker which I think contributed to my mum's anxiety. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a drink when I'm in the pub, but it doesn't generally bother me. Although there's been times in the past 3 months when I would happily have necked some!

I am a fat pig anyway and am a SAHM, so eating wise little has changed, although I have gained a few pounds (to add on to the 2 - 3 stone i should lose already) probably due to lack of exercise. Normally we would walk quite a lot at weekends, whether it be a day out, zoo visit or just a walk. I was (still am) hoping to get gym membership come next January, when dc2 gets funded nursery hours. There is no way I can do anything of the like until then, so fingers crossed, things will be normal again. I can here the distant echo of an dementor sucking in their breath and saying 'I despair' to thought anything normal happening in the next decade - but, sod em!

Had cbeebies on earlier to distract dc2 while eldest did some school work, and one of the programmes was at my local prom. It did look nice too. Stupid i know, but I like it when I see somewhere local like that (in a good light).

Yes @NothingIsWrong it's that groundhog feeling. And feeling weird as it seems everyone I know is happy with this. Start from the ADs, of course.

Especially for @Jourdain11 and @Ibake.

So, way back when in Bolton, there used to be a chap called Freddy Coop who used to deliver hot black peas off the back off his horse and cart.
This one day, there's a little old lady stood at her front door as he clops past. "Eeeh," she says, "Freddy, I haven't had a pea for forty year!"
"Gee up, Dobbin," he says, "there's going to be a flood!"

(You have to read this in a Lancashire accent, as it was originally told to me by my Auntie Gladys...)

Hester I'm okay, thanks! Back for my top up chemo tomorrow, but thankfully it is going to be much easier than the last lot.

A friend rang me up this morning - super down because her mum had been guilt-tripping her about going out and so on, "don't you know you should STAY AT HOME" etc. And I was like, but why? Neither she, her husband, nor her child are vulnerable. The guidance is no longer to stay at home! I just don't get why some people are loving lockdown so much and why they seem so oblivious to the misery it is inflicting on others.

@Cattermole

Especially for *@Jourdain11 and @Ibake*.

So, way back when in Bolton, there used to be a chap called Freddy Coop who used to deliver hot black peas off the back off his horse and cart.
This one day, there's a little old lady stood at her front door as he clops past. "Eeeh," she says, "Freddy, I haven't had a pea for forty year!"
"Gee up, Dobbin," he says, "there's going to be a flood!"

(You have to read this in a Lancashire accent, as it was originally told to me by my Auntie Gladys...)

Haha

Hi Jourdain, nice to see you back.

Most people here seem very happy to send their kids back in September full time.

I really hope it happens.

Wales - Dripford has finally given permission for two households to get together indoors, with the caveat that if any of them show symptoms everyone has to isolate for two weeks. He quoted NZ as the way to go.

That`s it folks

Shodan that brought back memories, my grandma had all the Miss Read books in her spare room and when I was a kid I used to read one every time I stayed over! I wonder if she still has them.
Hello @Jourdain11, how are you feeling? Yes to the schools thing. Our school has year 2 starting back today (one of my DD’s is year 1 but in a mixed year 1/2 class so I’m in the WhatsApp group for year 2), they’ve called in every ounce of manpower and ingenuity to fit them back in. The ones who have decided not to send their year 2 in as it’s too dangerous are now kicking off that the teachers are putting too much time into getting them back in the classroom and ignoring the ones at home (by choice).

Spending my day sorting out the kids toys. A friend’s sister died yesterday very suddenly (non Covid, so not a sadly death), and her family are flying over from abroad for the funeral etc with young children so friend is gathering up all the stuff they might need so they don’t have to fly it over with them.